I’ll start by saying that I’ve been prescribed medication for a long time, and for a long while I was in a state where I didn’t understand what was happening to me—my past drug-induced psychosis terrified me. It felt like every wrong or suspicious thought was leading me straight into another psychosis. For those familiar with drugs: my psychosis was triggered by months of daily weed use and a one-time dose of one gram of street amphetamine—which could’ve easily ended my life… (I didn’t know how much I was taking.)
The point is, now I live with a very small dose of medication—1.5 mg of cariprazine. I’m under the long-term supervision of an experienced psychotherapist/psychiatrist, and I’m moving forward. She says I’m completely healthy, but a very anxious person whose thoughts, under stress, tend to slip into the psychotic spectrum—but not full psychosis. I just start seeing not-so-logical connections everywhere, which is called “magical thinking,” and… I always have insight when this happens.
In truth, I’m a very chaotic, lost person, because sadly I grew up in such an environment. But I want to change—I want to “grow out of” this learned behavior from home.
You know, it probably isn’t schizophrenia. Not even something long-term. I feel as if I’ve been deceiving you, but I never did—neither my doctor nor I fully understood what was happening at the time. But year by year, it fades, and my psyche is stabilizing.
I’m still grateful for being here.
It felt good to correspond with you—especially during those days when I was trembling from not knowing what was happening to me.
I don’t yet know if I’ll stay here, but for now, I want to participate in the forum. After all, I did have a serious, nearly year-long psychosis—so I’m not completely “out of context” here.
If you still feel like having me here—I’d be honored. Thank you again for everything.
I have almost had no symptoms for many years, and I am currently trying to taper off meds with doctors approval. I get to 3.75mg zyprexa and am stopped because I can’t sleep good enough. Symptom wise everything is ok.
But I’m still stuck on the meds because of this, and I have past experiences that only other people who had psychosis can relate to, so it’s good to be able to come on here and interact with other people who are in the know.
I’m not very active though, but staying in touch is enough for me.
I think you’re right… you know, I really don’t want to completely leave this place—unless a day truly comes when I feel that I’m no longer gaining anything new from it, nor giving anything new to it. @Mr_Hope
Here, too, I felt human—both beautiful and intelligent… people here really supported me, and I’m grateful for that. Sometimes, when I was sharing something, I’d get a certain response and see myself through another person’s eyes, which is very healthy for anyone.
Honestly… life feels really charming to me right now. I want to connect and talk with everyone, even just through messages.
You’ve experienced psychosis, so I don’t see a problem. The forum name is schizophrenia but we have more than a few people who have bi-polar with psychotic features, and a lot of people get their diagnosis changed throughout the years.
You didn’t deceive anybody, you’re going through the waves of psychiatric diagnosis changes, that a lot of us go through.
That is great news. I hope you can get sleep as well, and become fully recovered. So, what you mean to suggest is that cognitive abilities were being subdued by the medications at high doses?
Definitly. I have been on zyprexa in doses ranging from 20-2,5mg. Cognition gets better the lower dose. I don’t know if it’s as obvious for other antipsychotics, but it’s true for zyprexa.
I remember missing a dose of my medications once, and feeling life being brought back into me. But, I guess, not everyone is fortunate enough to come off medications, at this point in my life I think it would be a disastrous attempt as far as I am concerned.
I am happy for you, however, that you are on such a low dose of Zyprexia, and may fully recover free of medicine eventually.
I was on 10mgs zyprexa while trying to care for my wife, who had vascular dementia.It was not a good situation, to say the very least. Luckily managed to get the dose halved. Was then more able to care for here.
Went up to 4,3mg zyprexa yesterday for sleeps sake. The funny thing is I seem to sleep worse on both higher and lower doses than 4,3mg. And sleep on 4,3mg is not good either, on average. So I’m kind of forced to go off the medications for my health at this point. Luckily it seems that I might be able to. If I’m consistently stable on 3,75mg, I hope I can go all the way. I wouldn’t mind going on another AP if it was necessary at a later stage, but for now I got to focus on not being dependant on zyprexa since it is not viable sleepwise. Will see what happens.
